


Rotting Remains Of Ribcage Gardens

by StardustGay



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Rape/Non-con is Breif and Not Severe, Author uses close friend's expiriences for self harm, Author uses personal expiriences as basis for both panic attacks and inpatient treatment, Gen, Graphic descriptions, Inpatient Therapy, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 03:02:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11546130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StardustGay/pseuds/StardustGay
Summary: "His panic attacks are scaled like earthquakes that tear apart his body and leave him trembling in the aftermath."Kurt suffers in silence as his mind and emotions are stained and ruined with self hate and depression.





	Rotting Remains Of Ribcage Gardens

When Kurt gets nervous, or stressed, he gently runs his fingers over the raised skin on his arms, tracing each scar and attempting to control his breathing. There aren't many of them, not really, and due to knowing his way around creams and gels most of the cuts dissapeared or were barely visable, but he can always feel them. Feel the raised lines and the ghost of a sharp blade and remember the swell of emotions that always balled up inside his lungs until he couldn't breathe.

He recalls all the performance meltdowns Rachel has had, the dramatic wash of emotions she forced them to watch and comfort her afterwards. He remembers everytime she called them panic attacks and a bitter taste fills his mouth as laughter bites his teeth. Panic attacks are weeds growing in your ribs and heaving breaths that never feel like breaths. The way your body screams at you icantbreatheicantbreatheicantbreathe. Panic attacks are bloody cresent moons on your arms and scratches you don't remember making, trying to rip out your hair as sobs rip apart your vocal chords. It's drowning in fear and hoplessness and being left so wringed out there's a hole in your chest and you just can't feel anything. Staring at a wall without seeing because seeing takes energy you no longer have.

Rachel is adept at hysterics. And while his panic attacks are scaled like earthquakes that tear apart his body and leave him trembling in the aftermath, he sits quietly while she explains after a fit of crying and self pity that sometimes she has panic attacks. Like just because you panic you understand what its like to be eaten alive by the feeling.

Kurt likes to strip at night and stand in front of the mirror, cataloging the bruises that stain his skin like blooming flowers he never asked for. Sometimes he hates himself for thinking the bleeding colors are pretty. He presses into them without meaning to daily, but when his wrists and thighs have too many fresh wounds he digs his fingers into the battered skin and relishes in retaking the pain and inflicting it when _he_ wants to. This pain is his to give himself. These bruises are his, these scars are his, and he is taking them back from thick headed Midwesterners who think he is worthless as if he doesn't tell himself so everyday.

Kurt is a smart boy, he knows he should get help for this. Knows what he is doing is wrong and that he shouldn't think of himself this way. That through the years of shoving and punches something inside of him just snapped. Something other than his skull on every impact. The sharp noise of skeleton verses hard surfaces and brunt force. A collison without the car where it is his body that is wrapped around his tree and his mind that is bleeding. He tells himself he doesn't tell anyone because of his dad's heart. Because he doesn't want to dissapoint people. Because maybe it isn't that bad I've felt normal for two days now maybe I'm making it up. That it isn't any of their damn business.  
He doesnt want to admit that maybe he doesn't want it to go away. That in the middle of the night what haunts him is the thought of getting through everything. Because he doesn't know how to deal with normal any more. Doesn't know how to act when he isn't hiding, how to deal with normal emotions in normal doses. That if you strip away all that's wrong with him he doesn't know who'll be left.

Kurt doesn't tell anyone.

He imagines thin chains snaking their way over him, weaving beneath the persona he shows the world -his own figurative armor- and the smothering cloud of _bad_ that layers and hides the person he truely is. They mummify him, the chains. Keep the bad tightly coiled inside and the perfect, snarky gay bestie left outside. And every missed solo or opportunity, every biting comment he knows is ment to hurt, every clang of lockers against bruises layered on top of bruises, he can hear the clicks. Soft steady _click click click_ of padlocks snipping into place. He hides the keys inside the withering garden of his lungs and smiles. Nothing can bother him. He's underappreciated and cast aside and looked down on but that just means he has to try **harder**. _Just a little bit harder._

_I'm almost there._

Karofsky forces himself on him in the locker room, landing the second kiss because Kurt feels like he's suffocating. The worst time for a panic attack. A large, meaty hand squeezes his ass and a tongue slides across his lips and he starts hyperventilating and lashing out without control and even though he feels like he's drowning he is thankful the panic attack hits. That the quiet before the storm was short this time because if he had been stuck in the in between much longer he does know what would have happened. Karofsky sees his crazy, writhing body in the ground and the sharp pained inhales of notenoughairwhycantibreathewhereistheair and doesnt come any closer. Flees when his sleeves slip up and his nails did into old scars that split and bleed.

No one comes to the locker room and he spends a period screaming in his head. He pulls himself together, treats his wounds, fixes his hair and smiles. Nothing can touch him.  
( _Except large hairy hands that squeeze too tight and wander and_ )

He scrubs himself pink that night while he sings musical numbers softly. His father stops by the bathroom door and smiles fondly at the sweet song before walking away. The bath water turns red when his scars break back open from his scrubbing. The sink is pink and his toothbrush sits in the trash looking like a murder weapon. Everything is spotless when he leaves, and if he hides his bleeding gums and winces when he moves no one notices.

If there's one thing Kurt is truely sorry for its the fact that his father will blame himself. As if his dad wasn't the best he could be doing the best he could do. Kurt didn't hate him for not always being the perfect PFLAG parent, or getting things wrong sometimes. Burt was a wonderful father, and when he writes his last draft of his goodbye he makes sure that he has three pages dedicated to assuring his dad it wasn't his fault. He adds in some for Carole, because she was amazing as well. He tries not to ramble about his pain or his sorrows, but it feels wrong not to let his dad know that he didn't end it because of silly reasons. That it ment more than a few missed opportunities to shine and a rejected crush or two. That he was stronger than taking blades to his soft skin because some boys said some mean things. That what people see as things rolling off his back are things that dig into his skin like parasites and demand him to tear pieces of himself off so they can feed and grow. He leaves a frank and to the point description of the _why_ and three of his feeling journals for the more detailed, ramblings of his thoughts.

He downs two bottles of painkillers, washes them down with cheap alcohol and a mix he found online that should help it move quicker. He locks his door, dresses up, and lays on his pillows. Kurt hopes his mother wouldn't blame him when she met him earlier than expected. He hoped she would love the mess he made of himself, if there was anything to find after his heart stopped beating.

_Bump Bump Bump..Bump....Bump.....bum-_

 

_**BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP** _

"Kurt...please. Please baby boy I need you. Why would- why would you do this to yourself?"  
The absolute wreck of his dad's voice drilled everything home. The scrape of the plea against a worn out throat that had spent more time sobbing than talking. His eyes couldn't focus on the piercing white of the room or the colors of the flowers of well wishers. His ears rang with the steady beep of his heart moniter like a knife driving home where he was and that he had failed and he had the urge to weep. He was stuck, and he was dissapointed.

They avoided the topic the first day after he woke up. Talked about how many people were worried about him. He understood he wasn't hated by most of the people he knows. He also understood the flowers and cards and stuffed animals weren't because they were broken up at the thought of him gone. It was because suicide and death scared people. Because the knowledge that he had almost died, that he wanted to die, hurt them. They feared death, that doesn't mean they like him. He would send flowers to most people at his school if they had done similar.

The second day they talked long term options. Due to how long this has been going on, the same harm and all of his other cracks and breaks, the doctor's wanted him to do inpatient therapy. Where they could keep an eye on him for a long time. Insist on therapy and intensively try to stabalize him. He doesn't speak much when he woke up, doesn't really have an opinion. Doesn't have much to say.  
He felt like every word out of his mouth was a word he wasn't ment to speak. Every breath he took was more than he should have been taking. He should be dead. They sent him to a mental hospital after he expressed such thoughts drugged up on painkillers.

He was a few towns over not three days later, in unflattering clothing without strings or belts or anything really. In case he tried to hang himself. He wasn't allowed solid shoes, given soft fabric, like slippers, to wear instead. He was monitored and checked in on and sent to see his therapist everyday.  
Everyone are together and when he looked across the table at a girl he knew cried herself to sleep, as she rocked in her chair he met dull lifeless eyes he knew well. There were two types of eyes in the treatment center. Dead eyes that were ringed in red from tears and underlined in blue from lack of sleep, and wild, pain filled eyes that were glossy from constant tears and wet cheeks, underlined in the same bags but these eyes were _alive_.  
He looked into the mirror and saw the first type, the dead eyes that unnerved the staff. The eyes that told people he had given up.

He's there for two weeks before he sits on the playground outside, for the younger kids who stay there and for daily outside time, and looks up into the sun. And he breathes. Like slowly and painfully the weeds are ripped from his walking carcus and replaced with something vital. Something he had been missing.

And for those brief minutes of calm, he watchs a cloud and he hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> I recently read a fanfic where Kurt was feeling similar things and I noticed often times authors don't get the feelings across. It's all actions and a few self-hating thoughts. So I wanted to write something where it was all about the emotions because that's what it was for me. This clump of emotions that clogged the back of my throat and made it hard to breathe. The words may be too poetic for such a horrible state of mind but I wanted to really try and get what I had felt and what Kurt was feeling across.


End file.
